FOREST, FISH AXD GAME COMMISSIONER. 8l 



The plants used were mostly three and four-year old transplants, the 

 balance of the stock consisting of two-year old seedlings, untransplanted. 

 The latter were tried because of our inability to obtain larger plants. The 

 transplants varied in height from eight to fourteen inches. For the first two 

 vears these infant trees made but little growth, as their vitality was suffi- 

 cient onlv to recover from the shock of transplanting and in establishing 

 the new root growth necessary to further development. But in 1905 and 

 1906 the pines put on each year " leaders " or tips from fourteen to twenty- 

 three inches long; and if the present rate of growth continues these trees 

 will attain ten vears hence a height of twenty feet or more, the crowns will 

 meet, and the young forest will be in evidence. The accompanying photo- 

 graph, taken this year, shows the condition of this plantation at the present 

 time, all of the trees being alive and in a thrifty condition. 



The soil in which this planting was done is so poor that the undertaking 

 seemed at one time a hazardous experiment. The land had been burned over 

 repeatedly, destroying every vestige of humus and leaving only a clear sand 

 that would not adhere when pressed in the hand. The ground was covered 

 with a low, scanty growth of ferns and huckleberry bushes, while here and 

 there young poplars were making their appearance. It was certainly an 

 unpromising site for any future tree growth of merchantable species. But 

 as our Northern pines are found largely on a sandy soil these species were 

 used for a large part of the plantation, and the result has justified their 

 selection. The percentage of plants that died was unusually small, much 

 less than in operations of this kind as observed elsewhere. The blanks were 

 filled the next spring, and now that portion of the plantation occupied by 

 white and Scotch pine shows unbroken rows of young trees without a dead 

 one anywhere in sight. 



A few of the white pines on this tract (West Harrietstown) were taken 

 up in 1904 and others set out in their place. These plants were not dead, 

 but their main stems were covered in spots with a white powdery substance 

 showing that they had been attacked by a genus of bark lice, the chermes 

 pinicorticis. As a result these plants showed a dwarfed, distorted growth, 

 and although they may have lived they would not attain a desirable height 

 or shape. There was danger, also, that the other trees of this species would 

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